The Desert Generals

I'm not sure what you mean Del Boy. Would you mind elaborating a little?

On the subject at hand in isolation the North African campaign was very important for all involved. However, taken into context against the greater scheme of things it was a minor theatre of war. It pales in comparison against the Eastern Front, where more people fought and died than all the other theatres of war put together. Not only was the Eastern Front the deadliest theatre in WW2, it was the deadliest conflict in human history. 30 million people died on the Eastern Front, it resulted in the utter ruin of one superpower and saw the emergence of another.

There is no comparision.

So do we qualify significance by people killed? Or do we look at the strategic value?

To my mind whilst many died on the Russian front, the North African campaign was of strategic value to both sides, regardless of the number of people killed. The importance to the Axis forces diminshed as the Red Army rolled in from the East, but I still maintain that their strategic goals were valid and thus it was equally valid for the Allies to thwart them - see earlier posts for my rambling opinion.
 
OK well here is a question for you then:
Where was the endpoint of the North African campaign going to be for the Germans?
- Was it over when they reached the Suez?
- Were they going to go south and knock South Africa out of the war?

I'm not sure how developed the oil industry was then. Where there any functioning oilwells in Egypt, or anywhere West of Iraq and Arabia?

Could Turkey have been brought into the war? Admittedly not much use in terms of equipment, but plenty of soldiers, and safe bases in Eastern Turkey to bomb the Russian oilfields. Perhaps a safer supply line to the East as well.
 
I have still yet to see what strategic necessity there was in North Africa, it was going to be a never ending front for the Germans and one that they had no real chance of winning given that the British were always falling back to their major supply bases in South Africa and India while German supply lines grew ever longer.
The reason that Germany got involved in the fight between the British Commonwealth and the Italians in North Africa was solely to prevent the total defeat of the Italian forces in the theater, which if it happened, Hitler believed would cause the collapse of Mussolini's government, and expose all of the Northern Mediterranean, to British influence.

The trouble was, Rommel's early successes lead the Nazi leadership to believe that an advance through Egypt up into Palestine and on to Southern Russia was also possibility, despite what the cooler heads in logistical services told them.
 
So do we qualify significance by people killed? Or do we look at the strategic value?

To my mind whilst many died on the Russian front, the North African campaign was of strategic value to both sides, regardless of the number of people killed. The importance to the Axis forces diminshed as the Red Army rolled in from the East, but I still maintain that their strategic goals were valid and thus it was equally valid for the Allies to thwart them - see earlier posts for my rambling opinion.

When you deal with numbers in the millions, compared with numbers in the tens of thousands, IMO it's impossible to downplay their significance. The fact is that the numbers of soldiers, tanks, guns and planes embroiled on the Eastern Front were roughly a hundred times greater than those fighting in Africa and ten times greater than those fighting on the Western Front. Those facts alone give numbers massive strategic value.

As far as the North African campaign goes, it had great importance in isolation and from national perspectives but whatever happened in the East would determine the outcome of the war. The North African Campaign would only have had war-winning significance to either a victorious Wehrmacht returning from Russia or the Western Allies. It would have had no significance for the Red Army and indeed historically that was the case.

Indeed, it can be argued that the successful North African campaign, and the success of Operation Overlord and what followed, only ultimately resulted in a stalemate between UK/US Armies and the Red Army. Otherwise the Red Steamroller would have trampled all over Western Europe and all Europe would have turned red. That's why the British Cabinet devised Operation Unthinkable, because after Stalingrad and Kursk it was clear that the long-term enemy would be Stalin's Russia.

The oilfields of North Africa and the Middle East had limited strategic value to Stalin. That is why their strategic value for WW2 was limited. The Germans did very well for the first three years of war but there was always the largest army in the world, waiting on their doorsteps. If Hitler had not attacked in 1941 then it is almost certain that Stalin would have attacked Hitler.

The European War was decided in Europe and in European Russia. Not North Africa.
 
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